Tuesday, 6 October 2009

200,000 Pakistanis Have Applied to Enter Britain

Newspapers in Pakistan have claimed that at least 200,000 Pakistani nationals have applied to enter Britain over the past year.

The shocking figure — which cannot be justified in terms of student or any other sort of visa category — was revealed in a new spat between Britain and Pakistan during current talks.

According to media reports, the government of Pakistan plans to formally complain over the delays in processing the visa applications.

The rush of applications — most of them from people claiming to be students — has utterly overwhelmed the UK Border Agencys staff at their new processing hub in Abu Dhabi.

Despite the problem being generated solely by the Pakistanis, the meeting today between Labours Home Secretary Alan Johnson and Pakistans president and prime minister is likely to focus on the delay in processing the tidal wave of applications.

Even more disconcerting is that the visa issue threatens to overshadow the real reason for the visit, which is to discuss counterterrorism issues.

According to newspapers in Pakistan, angry visa applicants have complained of long delays, unfair refusals and of being unable to retrieve their passports for up to two months during the application process.

Some of the newspaper reports claimed that there were 200,000 Pakistani passports waiting at the British High Commission in Islamabad. If that claim is true, it means that there are literally millions of Pakistanis queuing up attempting to enter Britain.

Observers have pointed out that if millions of British people decided to swamp Pakistan with visa applications, that countrys infrastructure would also buckle — never mind the demographic change which such a tidal wave of immigrants would entail.

In fact, it would be no surprise if Pakistan turned down such a large number of applicants on the basis of not wanting so many British people living in Pakistan. This was, after all, the very reason why the Indian subcontinent wanted independence in the first place.

According to an editorial in the daily newspaper, Dawn, entitled UK visa farce, no other country has such onerous requirement, whereas arguably the potential security threats they have to address are no less severe.

According to British intelligence, more than two-thirds of all terrorist plots in Britain originate in Pakistan.

It was revealed earlier this year that fewer than one in 2,000 applicants from Pakistan was being interviewed at the UKBAs Abu Dhabi hub.

It was also revealed on this website that the British High Commission in Islamabad recruits local Pakistanis to do the initial processing of visa applications — despite Pakistan being listed as one of the most corrupt countries on earth.